Mayer Hawthorne is an expert at funky motherf*cking music that makes you want to dance and have a good time. The Ann Arbor native and former hip-hop DJ has picked up fans like Justin Timberlake and Snoop Dogg for his personal take on soul music, most recently with the album How Do You Do. Not to mention his well-tailored suits and geeky specs.

We spoke to Hawthorne to find out what's happening with Detroit music, why it's important to dress up and what we should be playing at our holiday parties this season.

This whole thing really took off for you fast. How'd that happen?

Mayer Hawthorne: I've been a DJ and a hip-hop producer for most of my life, and I never really had plans to make soul music. But I was getting to a point making rap music where I had to clear a lot of samples for the beats I was making, and it got really expensive. It's a royal pain in the ass. I decided I would just make my own samples, and I wouldn't have to pay anybody to clear it. That's how I got started making soul music.

Peanut Butter Wolf, he's the president of Stones Throw Records out here in L.A. He heard some of those sample tracks, which were just for my own personal use, and he loved them and wanted to know if he could put them out on Stones Throw. And I said, "Sure, why not?" Even Peanut Butter Wolf thought it would be a fun little side project we'd put out and sell 1,000 copies, but those 1,000 copies sold out in two days. That was when we first realized we had something big here. Shortly after that, I put out an album called A Strange Arrangement, and we got a lot of love from some really famous people like Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg and John Mayer. That always gets a lot of attention. That was really big for me, man; it got me where I am right now.

Why do you think everybody got on board? A lot of people make good music and don't get that hype.

MH: You know, I think a lot of the people were hip-hop heads. Even John Mayer, he likes hip-hop. I make soul music for hip-hop heads. It's music I'd want to sample if I were a rapper. I think that was the initial appeal of it, and then, you know, another side of it is that it's just fun. Everybody wants to have fun.

"The Walk" is fun. You exchange gunfire with a beautiful woman.

MH: Prime example, man. I wanted to do something completely unexpected for that video. It would have been real easy to do a literal music video for that song, but I wanted to do something that nobody would expect. We took a standard argument between a couple and took it to the absolute extreme, where we were really trying to kill each other. I got to be Bruce Willis for a day.

Do you like shooting guns?

MH: That was the first time I've ever shot a gun, believe it or not. I know I grew up near Detroit, but I'd never actually shot a gun. I had to do a lot of training for that video. We were firing off big automatic machine guns and 9mm pistols and sh*t.

Speaking of Detroit, tell me about the music scene there today.

MH: There's a really dope collective of musicians called Will Sessions. Those guys are my favorite in Detroit right now. They did a lot of stuff on my new record. They do this big funk night in Detroit that's huge. Thousands of people come out for it. They're holding it down for the D right now.